Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AMP for email is bad

tutanota.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 161 posts

Re: AMP for email is bad

#51

Post by josteink »

tpetry wrote: post #37

AMP for email is targeting a completely different topic than the issues listed here and in the article. And i am shocked everybody is simply not seeing them with their amp4web hate. Amp for email is completely different than amp for web and is a very good solution: 1. Coding emails is really really hard. Every client is rendering emails differently, and Outlook is a beast with every version rendering differently. Amp…

> Email is completely different than the web. You cant do more than basic html like displaying text and pictures. Embedding videos? Slideshows for products? Interactivity like forms? Display realtime information? EVERYTHING IS NOT POSSIBLE! But it will be with amp4email.

This alone is the reason I oppose AMP email.

I want email to be a simple, static text-based communication platform.

None of that full HTML application-stack bullshit.

Re: AMP for email is bad

#52

Post by callahad »

SquareWheel wrote: post #47
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

amp4email is far worse and more dangerous than amp4web, and that's why privacy respecting email services are so opposed to it. Tutanota here, and FastMail who posted about it when it was first announced. AMP isn't a subset of HTML, it's it's own proprietary fork of HTML. It's not saying an img tag is okay, it's tell you to use an amp-img tag.

> AMP isn't a subset of HTML, it's it's own proprietary fork of HTML. This is another misunderstanding. HTML allows custom tags. This is built into the spec. AMP is plain and regular, standards-compliant HTML.

It is impossible to use AMP as a standalone Custom Element library and still validate as AMP. Valid AMP is required to dynamically load the library from Google's unversioned CDN.

Re: AMP for email is bad

#53

Post by SahAssar »

superkuh wrote: post #6

AMP is bad for everything. To be clear, this starts by it not being good for anything. Like on the web the form of AMP used by Google and Cloudflare. Starting with google: AMP does not actually make loading any faster. Google just uses it's search monopoly to make it seem so. When you use google search with javascript enabled AMP results are both prioritized in the listing and pre-loaded in the background. This makes…

> outgoing links to third party domains will be mirrored onto cloudflare's servers and re-hosted

That sounds very shady... Do they only do this if the third party link has a amp page or do they just do this for all pages?

Re: AMP for email is bad

#54

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

ori_b wrote: post #38
tpetry wrote: post #37

AMP for email is targeting a completely different topic than the issues listed here and in the article. And i am shocked everybody is simply not seeing them with their amp4web hate. Amp for email is completely different than amp for web and is a very good solution: 1. Coding emails is really really hard. Every client is rendering emails differently, and Outlook is a beast with every version rendering differently. Amp…

> You cant do more than basic html like displaying text and pictures. Embedding videos? Slideshows for products? Interactivity like forms? Display realtime information? EVERYTHING IS NOT POSSIBLE! But it will be with amp4email. Alright, you've convinced me: AMP for email needs to be killed.

> Embedding videos?

Let me open this email... oh noes, it's autoplay video.

> Slideshows for products?

Yes, more marketing garbage!

> Interactivity like forms?

Your password is about to expire, change it below or some garbage that will only make shit more insecure.

> Display realtime information

Blow me.

Re: AMP for email is bad

#55

Post by SquareWheel »

callahad wrote: post #52
SquareWheel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AMP isn't a subset of HTML, it's it's own proprietary fork of HTML. This is another misunderstanding. HTML allows custom tags. This is built into the spec. AMP is plain and regular, standards-compliant HTML.

It is impossible to use AMP as a standalone Custom Element library and still validate as AMP. Valid AMP is required to dynamically load the library from Google's unversioned CDN.

That's true. But it's still valid HTML. It's most definitely not a fork of anything.

>unversioned CDN

Isn't the filename versioned (v0.js)?

Re: AMP for email is bad

#56

Post by seieste »

swixm wrote: post #46
seieste wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP is slower for me because I have to press on my screen twice to get to the actual page I wanted to go to. Hence AMP requires at least 0.5s between the time I click on a Google link and get to my real destination?

Refusing to read the information you were looking for just because it is in an AMP page makes it look like you're following the "antigoogle" NetHack conduct.

Go to a Reddit AMP page? Can’t upvote the post or comments or see your messages.

Go to a wordpress AMP site? Can’t comment or access many comments.

A lot of features aren’t present in AMP, so often I don’t want the AMP version. Sure, at some point AMP can implement all those things, but eventually AMP just becomes a parallel HTML standard, when the only speed benefit comes from caching. It makes no sense to anyone but Google.

Re: AMP for email is bad

#57

Post by TeMPOraL »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #41
craftyguy wrote: post #20

Email providers that only allow access to your emails using their special clients (instead of, e.g. imap) are also bad for email.

I think theoretically you can use AMP email through an IMAP client, if that IMAP client supports AMP. But support for it is probably going to be pretty scarce, particularly in the open source world.

> But support for it is probably going to be pretty scarce, particularly in the open source world.

Wouldn't be too sure about that. Even if the more recognizable names all boycott amp4mail, somebody somewhere is bound to decide implementing it as a client or a plugin to a client is a fun/useful project, and will do it. Or Google itself may do it just to push AMP some more.

Re: AMP for email is bad

#58

Post by TeMPOraL »

jchw wrote: post #48

Every thread about AMP on Hacker News goes exactly the same way. It’s annoying, repetitive. But here’s the thing: while I get criticisms about AMP for web, pretty much none of them apply to AMP for email. The author of this article keeps bringing up points about AMP for web as if they have anything to do with AMP for email. AMP for email basically does one thing: it enables interactive emails without allowing arbitra…

> pretty much none of them apply to AMP for email

It seems they do, though. Both amp4web and amp4mail are attempts at taking old, established, and perfectly good elements of the Internet, and turning them into something that serves the interests of the adtech industry, at the expense of users.

> it enables interactive emails without allowing arbitrary code

It also conveniently enables extra advertising and tracking, blends together e-mail with the web, and breaks one of the most fundamental aspects of e-mail: with AMP, your message is no longer self-contained and fixed in time - instead, it becomes ephemeral and under control of the sender. On this basis alone I already do not want it.

This view may sound luddite-ish, but the problem here is the same as with the Web at large: more and more capabilities are added, advertised with the vision of more useful future[0], but the vision doesn't materialize. Just like on the web, for all the advances browsers incorporate, you sporadically see them used for something nice (like e.g. NYT visualizations that help you comprehend information in the article), but 99.9% of the time it is used for user-hostile adtech bullshit.

--

[0] - "For example, imagine you could complete tasks directly in email. With AMP for Email, you’ll be able to quickly take actions like submit an RSVP to an event, schedule an appointment, or fill out a questionnaire right from the email message." - https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/bringing-power-amp-.... That sounds cool, but doesn't necessarily require AMP.

Re: AMP for email is bad

#59

Post by joshuamorton »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #41
craftyguy wrote: post #20

Email providers that only allow access to your emails using their special clients (instead of, e.g. imap) are also bad for email.

I think theoretically you can use AMP email through an IMAP client, if that IMAP client supports AMP. But support for it is probably going to be pretty scarce, particularly in the open source world.

You're correct. There's nothing about amp4email that requires a Gmail account.

I'm actually pretty sure that if you use an imap client it whatever, you could view amp email from some site without ever communicating with a third party.

Re: AMP for email is bad

#60

Post by nullandvoid »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #8
superkuh wrote: post #6

AMP is bad for everything. To be clear, this starts by it not being good for anything. Like on the web the form of AMP used by Google and Cloudflare. Starting with google: AMP does not actually make loading any faster. Google just uses it's search monopoly to make it seem so. When you use google search with javascript enabled AMP results are both prioritized in the listing and pre-loaded in the background. This makes…

> When you use google search with javascript enabled AMP results are both prioritized in the listing and pre-loaded in the background. Or Bing search or Baidu search or Yahoo! Japan search and so on. The whole point of AMP is that it can be safely preloaded and prerendered, making it faster than any other web page you can create for people coming from a link aggregator. One of the big advantages it has over Facebook…

Why does it make sense for Google to control this prefetch mechanism rather than just using a browser built in with prefetch type setup
Post reply on HN